Bulgarian to English Translation

This direction is used when a Bulgarian document has to be put before an English-speaking country. The typical applicant studied or worked in Bulgaria and is now applying to a university, an employer or an immigration authority in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada or Australia. The document is written in the Cyrillic alphabet, while the authority that will read it assesses it against a Latin-script Anglo-Saxon order.

Concrete examples make the direction clear: a student applying for a master’s degree in the United States with a Bulgarian university diploma, the documents of a specialist who worked in Bulgaria and then moved to the United Kingdom, the civil registry records of a family moving to Canada. What they have in common is that the document makes sense within the Bulgarian system but, because of its alphabet, cannot be read directly by the receiving side.

Education and work files form the backbone of demand; Bulgaria’s labour mobility, above all towards the United Kingdom, keeps professional and civil registry documents in constant demand in this direction. The second group is made up of family documents.

The shared difficulty with these documents is that the Bulgarian administrative reality is not directly recognisable to an English-speaking authority, and that the Cyrillic alphabet has to be transliterated correctly.

Because of the Bulgarian community in the United Kingdom and other English-speaking countries, a file in this direction is often made up of several documents; diplomas, civil registry records and professional documents are submitted together, and all of them are expected to be prepared with the same transliteration. The same name written differently from one document to another damages the coherence of the file.

Bulgarian institutional abbreviations are not carried into the English text as they stand; they are unpacked and, where necessary, given in brackets in their original form. Registry, registration and file numbers are not translated, and only the record they belong to is stated.

In professional documents the title and the scope of authority are conveyed by function; in fields such as medicine and engineering a diploma on its own may not be enough and the curriculum and practical experience may also be called for, which increases the volume of translation in these documents.

Technical matters peculiar to Bulgarian into English

The first problem in this pair is transliteration from Cyrillic into Latin letters. Bulgaria has an official transliteration system; for personal and place names the Latin spelling in the passport is taken as the basis and kept consistent with that official system. The same name appearing differently on two documents creates confusion for the official examining the application.

Bulgarian Cyrillic differs from Russian Cyrillic in some of its sound values (the letter ъ, for example); correct transliteration is what allows the same name to be carried across consistently. Place names are not translated but preserved in their original spelling.

Official Bulgarian style uses prepositions and the definite suffix in place of case endings; the structure is rebuilt in the move into English. Institutional names are rendered according to their function; the ЕГН (unified civil number) is an identity number and is not confused with the date of birth.

The seal and registration details on the document are preserved in place; registry numbers are not translated but given with a reference to the record. Because dates are given in day-month-year order, the month is written out in words.

Since the Bulgarian diploma system rests on the European higher education framework, the credit and level information in the transcript is preserved openly; the grading system is not equated with an English counterpart but explained.

The Bulgarian grading system uses a scale running up to six, and both the highest mark and the pass threshold are explained for the English reader; if the direction of the scale is left unstated, results can be placed at the wrong level.

Across documents belonging to the same person the transliteration is kept consistent; using a different Latin form on one document makes identity matching harder and can hold the application up.

Which documents call for this direction

• Diplomas, the академична справка (transcript) and course descriptions
• Birth, marriage and civil registry records
• Employment, service and criminal record (свидетелство за съдимост) documents
• Bank and income documents
• Professional qualification documents

Education and work files form the backbone of demand; keeping the transliteration consistent throughout the file is critical for identity matching. The breakdown of courses and the grading scale are explained.

In family documents the relationships between relatives are set out openly. In commercial documents the company name and registry details are carried across in their original form.

Chain of certification

Because the target is an English-speaking country, the sworn translator system does not come into play: the United States and the United Kingdom ask for a signed statement of accuracy, Canada for a translator registered with a provincial association or an affidavit, Australia for NAATI accreditation. A document arriving from Bulgaria is expected to carry an apostille.

For these differing expectations, look at the certification regime of the target country and the requirements for the document type. Tell us the Latin spelling of the name in the passport and the receiving institution before you send the document.

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The account here summarises the typical case; notarisation and apostille steps are costed as separate items. Where you are in doubt, it is as well to put the question to the institution before applying.